Soil carbon farming

We all know that we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we pump into the air. And we know that traditional farming practices help speed up the release of CO2. But what if we could change our farming habits to use techniques that not only help us build more productive farms, but also capture and store more carbon. Well, that's the promise of soil carbon farming

Transcript

Antony Funnell: Staying with the future of agriculture, or at least some potential future directions, and let's take a look at a series of farming trials currently underway in Australia, into what's called soil carbon farming.

We all know that we need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we pump into the air, and we know that traditional farming practices help speed up the release of CO2.

But what if we could change our farming habits to use techniques that not only help us build more productive farms, but also capture and store more carbon?

Well that's the promise of soil carbon farming, and as Landline's Pip Courtney reports, one Australian scientist is now spending her life savings to prove it can work.

For the last two years, retired soil scientist Dr Christine Jones has been travelling the country, talking to farmers and politicians, speaking at forums and field days and running farm trials.

Christine Jones: So this has been sprayed out to put the lacuna in ...

Pip Courtney: She's frustrated that scientists and politicians don't see the same opportunities she sees.

Christine Jones: This year Australia will emit just over 600 million tonnes of carbon. We can sequester 685 million tonnes of carbon by increasing soil carbon by half a per cent on only 2% of the farms. If we increased it on all of the farms, we could sequester the whole world's emissions of carbon.

Pip Courtney: With modern farming practices to blame for depleting soil carbon, Dr Jones says nothing short of a radical change in farming methods will turn things around. And that radical change means no more bare soil in grazing or cropping paddocks.

Christine Jones's approach involves getting farmers to keep their ground covered with plants all year round. She says plants are the key to removing excess carbon dioxide from the air, so the more ground cover there is, the more carbon will be stored in the soil, because bare earth gives its carbon up to the atmosphere.

While soil carbon credits won't be part of Australia's emissions trading scheme, which starts next year, Christine Jones is confident that one day Australian farmers will be paid for the carbon they build.

Christine Jones: They can build something like between 25 and 30 tonnes of carbon for every tonne of product that they produce. They can be so far on the right side of the ledger that there's no need to fear being included in an emissions trading scheme.

Pip Courtney: Dr Jones knew that if her ideas were to carry any weight, that she'd have to show that farmers could profitably graze and crop their land, and maintain permanent ground cover. Two years ago, 18 farmers in three states agreed to trial her ideas. In return, she'd pay them $25 a tonne for the carbon they built.

Christine Jones: We will be getting the first data in Australia from landholders that are doing something different and building carbon in their soil and that'll be the basis of a whole new set of models and a whole new data set that can then be—hopefully advisers can then take to their Ministers, and say, 'Well we have some new advice, Minister; the old advice, I'm sorry, wasn't right.'

Man: Oh I sprayed some lubricant up in the gears there before...

Pip Courtney: Central Queensland cattle farmer Noel Moretti was one of those who signed on for Dr Jones' trial. He was attracted, not just by the cash but because he knew by adding carbon, he'd increase the fertility and water-holding capacity of his soil.

Noel Moretti: It just made a lot of sense. And through the extra carbon, it's going to store water and our plants need water.

Pip Courtney: By being carbon-smart, Mr Moretti aims to lift farm income by 10%, and he's not the slightest bit bothered by Christine Jones' skeptics.

What changes have you had to make so that you never had bare patches or bare paddocks?

Noel Moretti: We've been very precise on our ground cover, making sure we don't chew our grass down too far, and we've reaped the benefits, we've made a lot of money out of the extra growth.

Pip Courtney: At Christine Jones's urging, Noel Moretti also agreed to try pasture cropping. It's a pretty unconventional practice, as the crop is actually sown into a pasture.

In 2007 he and his son Michael, grew an oat crop; it was a success. The conventional wisdom is that there shouldn't be enough soil moisture to sustain both pasture and a grain crop. But Dr Jones claims farmers can have both, because soil high in organic carbon has better structure, is more fertile, and holds more water.

Christine Jones: So what we're going to do is plant a crop into this bare area, and into the buckle-grass area, and we're going to measure everything that happens. We'll measure the carbon under it, the water under it, we'll measure the yield of the crop.

Noel Moretti: Well that's the part that's exciting as far as we're concerned, to see what we can do and what is possible, given that it's not been tried in this area.

Christine Jones: But it's not just individual farmers who've been interested to see if this approach works. Early on, the Queensland government threw its expertise into the trials. Scott Stevens is with the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Water.

Scott Stevens: I think Christine puts a different viewpoint on where we're currently at, and where we can potentially go. I see that there's issues within our own systems that we can definitely improve on, and Christine's just another part of the puzzle that we can build on.

Pip Courtney: Proponents argue that farming to build carbon could be every bit as significant a change in cropping practices as was the move from ploughing to zero or minimum till.

Financial support for Dr Jones's work has come from several sources. Singapore-based businesswoman Rhonda Wilson put up enough money to allow Christine Jones to set up the Australian Soil Carbon Accreditation Scheme. It will financially reward those farmers who build up their soil carbon levels. Then there's mining company Rio Tinto, which has kicked in $30,000. They're interested in the bigger picture.

Fiona Nicholls: The challenge for climate change is so huge, we need to have as many options, as many solutions. And if the worst is, like if no carbon credits come out of it but we get improved soil productivity, if we get improved water retention out of people adopting these techniques, that's going to help in an adaptation mechanism for the change in climate that we're all told we're likely to have. So I don't see any downside in this, and the upside is huge. Potential upside is huge.

Pip Courtney: What do you think about the achievement so far?

Fiona Nicholls: Look, the anecdotal evidence looks very exciting, and the enthusiasm she seems to be getting in the different communities; she sends through pictures often, and also some of her discussions, she tells us when she's been to the Senate Committee and talked to them. So the energy of the lady is just really impressive.

Pip Courtney: Fiona Nicholls from mining company Rio Tinto.

But there are those who remain unconvinced. The Australian Farm Institute has a warning for those farmers thinking of cashing in on soil carbon.

Mick Keogh is the Institute's executive director.

Mick Keogh: If agriculture's included in an emissions trading scheme and therefore individual farms have to produce an annual greenhouse return and pay the cost of their nett emissions, then they're going to need every opportunity they can to lock up carbon. So in that case, soil carbon should be included, but it will be necessary to offset the emissions from livestock and fertilizer and those sorts of things.

If agriculture's not included, then soil carbon may be a possibility as an offset that you can sell to people, but people have got to remember they're selling the ownership of that carbon in the soil to someone else. They no longer own the carbon in the soil, and if it disappears for any reason, they have to restore it. So I guess the brief message is, for every credit, there's an equal and opposite debit if the reverse action occurs. So if a bushfire comes through, if a big drought occurs, if you decide you want to plough that paddock and that will reduce the soil carbon, then you've got to pay back any earnings that you've made and probably more before you can do that. So people need to understand the double-sided nature of storing carbon in soil.

Mick Keogh: We're seeing conferences with thousands of people involved, all looking to make their next fortune out of carbon, and I think that's quite a dangerous time for any particular issue. It can be easily diverted into dead ends and false hope. By all means we need to try this, by all means we need to understand what's happening, particularly in relation to soil carbon, but I'm not sure the information's available yet that would allow people to make judgments about, this is going to be the next big cash cow for agriculture.

Pip Courtney: Mick Keogh from the Australian Farm Institute.

But Christine Jones is undeterred. She says when she started her work, there were many soil carbon sceptics. Now she says, more people are at least prepared to listen. Politicians from all sides have visited her trial sites, and she says it won't be long before the results vindicate her.

Christine Jones: I think once people realise how important it is, and once we've proved that you can build the carbon and you can measure it, and that landholders can be rewarded for it, I think it'll open the floodgates, and I think we'll see enormous amounts of research, hopefully by the state agencies, so that I don't have to do it, but all over Australia and in other countries on soils, I think research into soil carbon will be huge.

Noel Moretti: It's going to happen, because every time you turn on the TV, people from the Pope, the American president, everyone from there down is talking about climate change and how we can change it. And all we need is the science to prove the system works, and it'll all come together. And I believe quite quickly, actually; it'll change quickly.

And by the way, all of the farmers involved in the Australian Carbon Accreditation Scheme will be presented with their first cheques at Parliament House in Canberra in May.

If you're interested in hearing more about Dr Jones and her trials, you can watch a longer video version of that report by going to the Landline website, or by using the ABC's iView service, which is also available online.

Now next week on Future Tense, we go to war. Well, not us so much as a bunch of robots.

Our guest will be PW Singer, the author of a new book called Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-first Century.

P.W. Singer: Bill Gates of Microsoft describes that robotics is right now almost exactly where the computer industry was in 1980s, poised for a break-out. And so the companies that work in this field cover the wide range. You have the very traditional defence contractors, they're the big companies like a Lockheed Martin, a Northrop Grumman and the like, but then you have this whole new wave of robotics companies, technologic companies, and what's fascinating is they often have a foot in both the military market and the civilian market.

Antony Funnell: That's the future of warfare with PW Singer, next week on the program.

Our producer is Andrew Davies; technical assistance this week by Jim Ussher. And thanks also to Kaitlyn Sawrey from JJJ for her assistance.